An Interview with Cally Taylor

Heavenly Writings:

An Interview with Cally Taylor

I started following Cally's blog about a year ago, when she was in the process of getting her first novel, Heaven Can Wait, published. Cally struck me as a friendly and helpful blogger, as well as a funny and articulate writer, so when her book was published I rushed out to buy a copy.

I loved it. I loved it so much I bought copies for my mum and sister for Christmas. She made me cry, right after I fell about laughing. There's not many books that can do that to me, so I was impressed

In the last few months, Cally has seen her first novel published, finished the editing of her second book, moved house, taken part in a massive blog tour and launched a short story competition. She's the December cover girl for Writers' Forum magazine. So, I was rather chuffed that she found the time to chat with The Project about her path from aspiring writer to published novelist.



Hi Cally! Your debut novel, Heaven Can Wait, has just been published by Orion. How did it feel the first time you saw your book on sale?

It was utterly amazing and very, very surreal. The first time place I saw my book on sale was in the paperback fiction chart in WHSmiths in Brighton and I couldn’t stop staring at it. It was sitting side by side with books by big name authors like Marian Keyes and Cecelia Aherne and even bigger name celebrities. I kept expecting a member of staff to hurry over to the display, grab my book and go, “Oh sorry, there’s been a mistake. Your book isn’t actually for sale it’s just part of an elaborate ruse/twisted joke/dream.” I still can’t quite completely wrap my head around the fact I’m a published author and my book has been out for two months now!

When did you first decide that you wanted to be a writer?

To be honest I can’t remember when I didn’t want to be a writer. I absolutely loved books as a child (I still do) and devoured anything and everything written by Enid Blyton. ‘The Magic Faraway Tree’ series was my favourite and I loved escaping into the surreal world she’d created. When I was eight I started writing my own ‘books’ and sent them off to Penguin Publishers in the hope I’d become a published author too. I was rejected, of course, but that didn’t stop me dreaming, or writing.

How long did it take you to write Heaven Can Wait? How much longer until it was published?

I started writing Heaven Can Wait in March 2007 and finished the first draft three months and three weeks later. I then edited it...edited it again...and again... for a further four months. I signed with my agent in September 2008 and my book was published by Orion Paperback in October 2009.

If you could go back and do the whole process again, is there anything you would do differently?

Nope. I wouldn’t change a thing. I was extraordinarily lucky.

Literary agents receive a mixed response from the writing community. Do you think agents are an “essential” or a “nice to have” for new writers?

I think they’re absolutely essential but I would say that as my experience of having an agent has been nothing but excellent! Publishers rarely look at their slush pile these days but they do take submissions from agents seriously - a novel submitted by an agent has already gone through a vigorous vetting process (my agency receives approximately 1,200 submissions a month and they only sign a handful of authors a year) and may well have undergone several edits as a result of agent feedback. Agents know the market – they know what sells and they know which editors like which genres. They also have contacts overseas and, thanks to my agent, Heaven Can Wait has been sold to nine countries. As well as the business side of things agents can be a real support to the writer in what can be a very solitary profession. They can offer advice and reassurance, answer questions and offer practical help. My agent has earned her commission a hundred times over.

How did you set about finding an agent?

I bought a copy of the Writers and Artists’ Yearbook and looked through the listings for agencies that represented women’s fiction and chicklit. I then highlighted six agencies that I thought were ‘the best’, well regarded or represented authors I was a fan of and sent off a covering letter, synopsis and three chapters (or whatever they asked for). I was very, very lucky to sign with the Darley Anderson Literary Agency – one of the best agencies in the business.

Have any aspects of the publication process surprised you at all? Is there anything that you know now that you wish you’d been told before you started writing?

I wish I’d know how time-consuming promoting your novel can be! Although my publisher did a lot to promote Heaven Can Wait I decided to do all I could to help. I set up a twenty-five leg virtual book/blog tour, launched several competitions, contacted local newspapers, my alumni newsletter and other contacts, and collaborated on various articles and interviews. Doing all that, whilst holding down a full time job, selling my flat and editing my second novel was utterly exhausting and I hardly had time to breathe never mind do anything else!

You’ve been an established part of the blogging community for quite a while. How do you feel this has helped / hindered your career as a writer?

I think being part of the blogging community has been a hugely positive experience. I joined the Novel Racers group (set up by established authors Kate Harrison and Lucy Diamond) in 2007 and loved the concept of a group of writers ‘racing’ each other to finish their novels. More important than the race (which was more for fun than anything else) was knowing that other writers were going through the same things as me. They were struggling with scenes, agonising over edits and desperately dreaming of publication. My blogging friends, whether part of the Novel Racers or not, have been hugely supportive. They’ve offered helpful suggestions when I’ve struggled, commiserations when I’ve been rejected and cheered my successes. Writing is such a solitary profession and it’s lovely being part of such a warm, supportive community.

What are you working on now?

A couple of weeks ago I delivered novel 2 to my agent and editor. My agent’s feedback was fantastic (which was a huge relief after spending a year on a novel without showing a word to anyone!) and I’m currently waiting for my editor’s verdict. While I wait I’m recharging my creative batteries and reading all the books and watching all the DVDs I didn’t have time to read/watch while I was working on novel 2. Hopefully, while I do that, a killer idea for novel 3 will pop into my head!

What is your literary goal?

To write the best books I can. To inspire, move and amuse people. To be a full-time author. And, if I’m allowed a little fantasy too, to see one of my books made into a film.

You’re currently running a Heaven Can Wait short story competition. What inspired you to run the competition? How do you feel about being a judge?

Before I started writing Heaven Can Wait I wrote a lot of short stories (I still do occasionally) and entered them into writing competitions. As writers we’re pretty insecure creatures and each time I placed in a competition (I even won a couple) my self-confidence grew. In 2006 I was awarded the runner up prize in the Woman’s Own short story competition and seeing my story in a national magazine gave my confidence an enormous boost. I realised that, while I’d always enjoy writing literary short stories, I was most comfortable writing commercial stories with a wide appeal. About eight months later I sat down and started writing Heaven Can Wait.

I always knew that, if my novel was ever published, I wanted to give something back to the short story community. I wanted to give another writer the same boost in confidence I’d received from placing in competitions and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to run my own competition to celebrate the launch of Heaven Can Wait.

I’m really looking forward to being a judge. When I used to enter short story competitions I’d often wonder about the quality of entries received and what it was that made a story rise to the top of the pile and catch a judge’s attention. I’m about to find out!

What do you think would really make an entry stand out for you?

An entry needs to catch my attention and hold it all the way through the story. I need to feel gripped, moved or entertained. A story should make a lasting impression on me – it should make me think, laugh or cry. The voice should be distinctive, the characters memorable and the theme should be clear and strong. A story should have a good beginning, a fantastic ending and shouldn’t sag in the middle. Pace should be perfect. I’m not asking for much!

And finally, can you sum up a key piece of advice for new writers in one sentence?

Write a lot, read a lot, study the craft, get other writers to critique your work, send it out to magazines/competitions/agents and don’t give up when you get rejected – get better!

Huge thanks to Cally for answering my questions, and remember, there's still time to enter her Heaven Can Wait short story competition. If you're looking for a great piece of Chick Lit to amuse you over the holiday period, then I heartily recommend Heaven Can Wait as it is a very touching, very funny, beautifully written book. For more information about Cally and her writing, check out her website and her blog.

Once again I'd like to send my thanks to Cally and wish a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!

An interview with John Clarke

Fun times & Festivals:
An Interview with John Clarke

There are a lot of literary and writing festivals out there these days; writing need not be a lonely business. There are author readings, writing workshops, one-to-ones with agents, pitch parlors; they are held all over the country, come in all shapes and sizes, suit all sorts of budgets. I like literary and writing events. It's a great way to meet like-minded people and expand your knowledge of the industry.

John Clarke is director of Wordquake, an organisation that is responsible for literary development work in the East Riding of Yorkshire and surrounding areas. He lectures on the MA Creative Writing at the University of Hull, teaching poetry. He founded the Beverley Literature Festival. He works as the UK & Ireland poetry editor for Arc Publications. There's no doubt about it, he's a busy man. John took some time out to chat to The Project about his work.

Hi John, could you summarise your career in the literary sector for us?

I started off as an actor, then went to study literature at Universtiy and took a Dphil in literary modernism - so I have both an practical and academic background. I'd been doing lots of bits and pieces as a freelancer in the literature development sector and was looking to earn some money on a slightly more certain footing. This job came along and I saw it as an opportunity to do all that I was currently doing, but to do it more effectively and securely. I was also keen to take my learning to as wide an audience as possible and to use my skills to enthuse as many people as possible about the potential pleasures of reading and finding words commensurate in someway to your experience.

How, specifically, does Wordquake enhance the literary culture of the East Riding of Yorkshire?

Don't know if I can answer that. I think I wanted to bring the best writers I could to this slightly out-of-the-way rural place. I think you have a responsibility in life to make wherever you are the centre of importance rather than looking further afield and longing to be there. I think we've done that. And I think that if you care about good writing (doing it and reading it), the East Riding is a great place to live at the moment, up there with the major population centres in terms of what it provides. In particular, I think we've done some good work with poetry and established some techniques in literature development that others have picked up on.

You founded the Beverley Literature Festival in 2002, and it has gone from strength to strength since then. However, there are a lot of literary festivals and events in the UK; what makes Beverley stand out?

We look after authors, act as enthusiastic and intelligent mediators between authors and audience and place emphasis on quality of writing and discussion opportunities. It's our job to take on big ideas and complicated books and to help in communicating clearly what they offer to as wide an audience as possible. I think we're also well liked by authors for the work we do with our audience and readers, and for the fact that we care about good writing. So that means we can punch above our weight - they come for the quality not necessarily the quantity of our audience, although that's increasing too.

What can aspiring writers gain from literature festivals? Why should they care / support them?

If you believe, as I do, that writing well is closely related to reading well, and that all literature is a conversation with writers and storytellers of the past and present, then a festival is an opportunity to experience those relationships live. You also get a sense of the everyday life of the author out of which the alchemical process of writing comes - sometimes it can seem that they're a special bunch of people who somehow live a different life to us. But, from my experience, they're not; they just have a set of skills and insights that are ultimately recognisable by all who've reflected on their life; or if the experiences they offer are remote, they have the ability to make them credible. It's a wonderful thing they have, but it's important to realise that great writing can come out of common experiences and seemingly ordinary people. Meeting an author also centres the literary work in something human and recognisable. Plus it's great to experience the rhythm of their voice, which sometimes stays with you so that you hear it whenever you read their work.

You work in Arts Development; what advice would you give to someone who wanted to work in this area? How could they set about building a career in this field?

Actually - I'm in libraries though you might not have thought it. I suggest that you read a lot and care about writing - the rest is no mystery to someone basically organised and administratively competent. If you want to do it, go to talk to someone who does the job. The great thing about literature development is that the job has no history; there's no particular cultural status attached to it (we're not curators, directors etc) and so people tend to compete less with each other and share their ideas more - at least that's how I've found it in Yorkshire and how I play it.

Your job brings you into a lot of contact with authors and publishers. Do you think the current influence of supermarket chains and, separately, the rise of e-books is having a positive or a detrimental effect on the national literary scene? What about regionally?

If the supermarkets are taking away the opportunity for high-street bookshops to cash in on best seller and subsidise their harder to sell, literary stock then that's a bad thing. What stops me from going all out against them is that there aren't really many independent bookshops left, and Waterstones are not that far away from the supermarket approach in the way that they discount books. But I'm no expert on this. What I do mourn is the passing of the old idiosyncratic bookshops that were, at their best, the creative expression of the owners reading and taste. Early Waterstones were also like this in that each manager seemed to have the freedom to shape the stock they held. It used to be a cause for celebration when Waterstones opened up - now it's sometimes hard to see the difference between them and WH Smiths. All this is a great loss to our literary culture and to the development of a diverse reading climate for a new generation of readers. I found, by accident, many books that you could not possibly find these days in a bookshop. Particularly the situation for poetry is dreadful in terms of bookshops on the high-street. It barely gets beyond the nation's favourite this and that.

This is where libraries need to be brave: we're the last non-commercial place where books can be offered on the basis of their quality and not necessarily their commercial appeal.

I've no experience of the e-book. The opportunity to download out of print and hard to find texts once the preserve of the major library and the bibliophile sounds great to me, so long as contemporary and copyright covered authors get their fair share of royalties.

You are quite active with poetry; teaching it, writing it and editing it. Poetry, however, is often considered the hardest literary market to crack. What advice would you give to aspiring poets?

Read it! If everyone who aspired to write poetry bought poetry books there would be the market. But they don't. And it pisses me off.

Beyond that, don't aspire, simply be - get on an write (and spend more time writing than moaning about not being published)! And recognise that being a poet doesn't necessarily require you to be published. Poetry is a vocation with no financial reward; see this as liberating: you can do what you like! - you're not going to lose any money by being experimental or traditional (crass dichotomy but you get the drift). So get on and play and enjoy the imaginative rewards the process of composition brings. If you do need to publish and can't get a serious publisher interested, just photocopy it 100 time - that's not far off what you'd be likely to sell if you had it published professionally.

Do you think poetry is underrated in the UK?

No. Just under-read. But we do need to look after the way it's taught and the skills necessary to enjoy it to the full.

What would you consider your proudest professional moment so far?

Pride is something remote to me. I distrust it. But then maybe I've learnt to be mildly proud all the time and don't realise it! But I did enjoy having some lines of a poem I'd written quoted back to me when I went to Strokestown poetry festival in Ireland as a competition winner. And I love hearing my children respond to books and poetry and feeling that they're opening up into these new worlds of pleasurable learning.

And, finally, where do you go from here?

I'm working on an extended piece of prose that a publisher is interested in and I've a collection of poems that's in the hands of an editor. That's all good. But the likelihood is that I'll need to continue to make a regular living to support my family. I did a leadership course in the arts a year back. During it, realised I didn't really want to be a big leader as it can take you away from the thing that you love. And I didn't like the crass importation of business leadership jargon and pseudo-psychology into the arts sector that was going on then. So I'm happy where I am. I have a young family; the work's flexible and varied (I do lots of bits and pieces) and I love having some time to play (seriously) with language and literature. So, life's good at the moment and sometimes you just have to recognise that and take it and live it and let ambition go hang. I'm not mucking things up for no good reason.


Thanks to John for taking the time out to chat to us. If you'd like to learn more about the Wordquake, then click here, information about the Beverley Literature Festival is here, The University of Hull Creative Writing MA is here, and Arc Publications are here.

An Interview with Della Galton

Short & Sweet:

An Interview with Della Galton

I've never been much good at short stories. Don't get me wrong, I could do them in principle, but they were just... well, just not very good. Trawling the blogs of other writers for advice, I soon noticed that they were all singing the praises of the same book, How to Write and Sell Short Stories by Della Galton.

I wasn't holding out much hope since my success rate with How To... books is not good (note the lack of knitting, gardening and poker skills I possess) but I'll try anything once.

I loved the book. I'm not saying I'm suddenly the greatest short story writer in the world, but at least I know where I was going wrong in the first place, and I know for sure that my stories have improved.

So, when I decided that I needed to find someone who was great at short stories, Della was one of the first to spring to mind. A successful novelist, short story writer, creative writing tutor and non-fiction writer, she seemed the perfect candidate for an interview with The Literary Project.

Hi Della, can you tell us when you started writing? What was it that made you pick up your pen?

I joined a creative writing evening class about 22 years ago, but not because I had any burning ambition to be a writer. I was dating and we decided that we needed something to “do” together. We were both interested in writing at the time, so it seemed like a good idea. I still go now!

Despite your success as both a writer and creative writing tutor, you still regularly attend writing classes yourself. Why?

I like the fact that I can read out stories and get feedback on them. I've made some good friends at the group, and I love listening to their work. I find it an inspiring and enjoyable experience to be with other writers.

It sounds like a good experience. Some writers, though, can be a bit scathing about writing groups. What do you think makes a good group?

You need a group that has at least some people at the same level as you, but also people that have been successful. Even though I've been published, I find it really useful to get feedback from other published writers.

My group is run by Ian Burton, who is great. He is quite laid back in his approach, so he goes with the needs of the group.

The only danger of writing groups is ending up in a “mutual appreciation society”. It might do your ego good, but it won't help your writing!

You’re a regular contributer to short story anthologies and women’s magazines, as well as having written a successful book on how to write short stories; what do you think is the key to your success?

Hard work! I write a lot, but then, I love writing. I write from the heart, and write what I care about. I also study my markets before writing; I'm a marketing person, so I look at what is being published, what people want to read. Then I try to fit my work into that market.

How do you pick a “good” writing course, and at what level, when there are so many to choose from?

The key is the tutor. It depends on what you want to get out of a course, but if you want to be published, then you need to go for a tutor who knows what is going on in the publishing world. Your tutor should be inspiring, ideally they should be published in your field, able to teach the art of writing, but also able to talk you through the practical side of the publication process. Most of all, your tutors should know what they are talking about; I've known of tutors at all levels, from introduction courses to Masters level, who knew the theory of what they were teaching, but had no practical experience of it. I mean, I don't teach scriptwriting because I've never written in that medium. It doesn't always stop other tutors, though. So my advice is: do your research.

You've written and published a huge number of short stories, two novels and a non-fiction book about writing short stories. Which is your favourite medium to write in and what are the key differences between them?

I don't know about favourite, but non fiction is the easiest to write, because you don't need to make anything up! Yes there is the research, but the characters, the story and the information are already there. You have to make it come alive, so you get to concentrate on the art, technique and craft of writing without being distracted by things like character and plot.

Personally I like fiction better. Short stories can be achieved in a relatively short time, where novels can feel like an endless grind. I find it difficult unless I can interspserse them. I love novels while I am writing them, but I'll hit a stage where I feel like I need to change to short stories, and vice versa. They fulfill different urges, I tihnk. Novels are deeper, while short stories are small and beautiful.

What was your first novel?

Everyone thinks writing a novel is easy; I know I did! I actually wrote my first novel – thankfully unpublished – when I was about 22. I thought that if I wrote 1000 words a day for 60 days then I'd have a publishable novel. I wrote 60,000 words, but it wasn't any good! I think I still have that novel somewhere.

Can you think of a mistake you’ve made in your writing career that you would advise others to avoid?

I am not very good at live interviews. I once got through a half hour interview in which I was meant to be plugging my new novel without mentioning it once. I talked about writing the whole time, but never mentioned my book.

Oh, and another time I got asked which was more successful, my novels or my non-fiction books. I answered “my non-fiction, maybe because my novels are rubbish!”. Not a good marketing move; hopefully the publisher wasn't listening!

Do you think that short stories are underrated in the UK?

Yes. People say they are making a comeback and there are a number of anthologies being produced, but often they don't pay very well, if at all. It isn't particularly fair, but that's the way things are going.

Ten years ago there were 21 markets for short stories, where there's only about seven now. I guess the public just don't want to read short stories; it's all celebrity memoirs and true life stories now.

Thinking about it, it isn't so much that short stories are underrated, as undervalued. It takes a lot of time and effort to write a short story. People just don't buy them.

And finally, can you sum up a key piece of advice in one sentence?

Write from the heart and never give up! If you stick at it, I really believe you will succeed.

Thanks to Della for taking the time out to have a chat with me. Della teaches creative writing courses in Bournemouth, and more details can be found on her website. If this interview has made you think about brushing up on your writing skills, then Della's book, How to write and sell short stories, published by Accent Press, is out now.

An Interview With Andrew Cowan

The Art of Teaching Creativity:

An Interview With Andrew Cowan

Postgraduate degrees in creative writing are becoming increasingly popular, with over 50 now available in the UK. The first, and still one of the best known, is the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia. It's alumni includes some impressive names, such as Ian McEwan, Giles Folden and Kazuro Ishiguro. It's no wonder, really, that every year so many people apply for a place on this course.

Andrew Cowan, himself UEA Alumni, is the current course director for prose fiction. He has four novels published and won several awards for his writing, so if anyone can tell us about the benefits of studying Creative Writings at postgraduate level, it's Andrew. He kindly agreed to answer a few questions about his own career, about creative writing and about the publishing industry in general.

Hi Andrew, can you talk us through your career to date, with emphasis on how you came to be course director on MA Creative Writing at UEA. What drew you to teaching creative writing?

- it’s not really a career but a series of variously unfortunate and serendipitous events. I did the UEA Creative Writing MA in 1985 with Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter, but not because I had any ambitions to be a writer. I was young, just out of my BA, and already nostalgic for being a student. I thought if I did creative writing I could prolong my life as a student without having to write so many essays, and in those days it was so much easier to get onto the UEA MA. I did manage to write three stories during my year, but then wrote nothing at all for the next two years - I was one of UEA’s failures in a way - and then it took me six years to complete my first novel because I kept allowing myself to be distracted, or kept losing faith in the idea of myself as a writer, and that has remained the case - it takes me a long time to complete a novel. I’ve written four and three quarters of them now, and it takes about four years per book, which isn’t economical - the money gets spread too thinly - so I’ve always taken on bits and bobs of teaching work, beginning with Arvon courses, of which I did about a dozen before I got a Royal Literary Fund fellowship at UEA, and so found myself in the immediate vicinity when a job came up on the faculty. I’m full-time, and I think I’m probably a more natural teacher, and certainly a more natural admin-type clerical person, than I am a writer. So that’s how I come to be course director - I have a facility for admin.

Your department has something of a reputation as a “star factory” due to the sheer number of successful authors that have studied with you. What do you think has made your department and your students so successful?

I hate the idea that we’re a factory, whether of stars or anything else, because there’s nothing production-line or mechanical about it. We don’t have a formula or template or even much of a curriculum. The MA is a conversation. For the Prose MA, two groups of twelve people meet in a room weekly and discuss their works-in-progress in a committed and supportive but largely unstructured way, and what’s happening, I think, is that this collective editorial exercise is providing the participants with a schooling in being their own best critics, which then equips them for life after the MA - the two or three or four subsequent years that it will take them to complete their first novels. Ours is the oldest course in the UK, but its structure is little different from the one offered in many other places, and the calibre of the teachers, though high, is certainly matched by the calibre of tutors elsewhere. I think what distinguishes UEA from many other places is the calibre of the students we attract. Our students are each other’s own best asset.

There is a lot of debate as to whether writing is a natural ability or a skill that you can learn. What’s your opinion on this? Do you think anyone has the potential to be a successful author?

I don’t know whether a facility for language is learned or innate. I suspect the facility is acquired in complex ways in early childhood, after which circumstances will dictate whether it is allowed to flourish - or is even forced to flourish. By late adolescence it will then begin to appear to be a natural ability. This can be fostered. Beyond late adolescence, I suspect it can’t be taught. Beyond that stage the role of the tutor is to guide rather than teach, and applaud when someone is truly on song for the first time (which is something I think Pat Barker once said). I don’t think anyone does have the potential to be a successful author, no. But that also begs the question of what constitutes ‘successful’ - I think there are a great many very good writers, with a genuine facility for language, and something interesting to say, who aren’t ‘successful’ because the publishing and bookselling industries are now precisely that, industries…

There is a feeling among some aspiring authors that the gap between new writers and publishers is ever growing, with the need to have studied Creative Writing at University level almost a pre-requisite for anyone wanting a career in literary fiction. Do you think this is the case? If not, why not? If so, is it necessarily a bad thing?

It is probably the case that literary editors in the past were more involved in the process of identifying and nurturing new writers, and did actively edit the works-in-progress of their authors, whereas now they are so caught up in the corporate squeeze that they haven’t time to edit, and can’t allow writers the time to develop their careers. I say this is probably the case, because it’s what everyone says is the case, though I’m not personally well-enough acquainted with the business side of publishing to know. What is definitely true is that publishers, and to an even greater extent literary agents, are actively looking to recruit new writers from MA programmes. I think this might be because academia now provides the close editorial oversight that publishing houses were once able to provide. It’s surely also because there are so many good MA courses, taught by practicing writers of some reputation, which means that more and more aspiring authors are choosing that route to publication - so publishers and agents would be foolish not to look there. But there is equally a widespread suspicion that we might be starting to see the emergence of a US-style ‘writing program’ novel, something safely realist and well-crafted and probably poignant, but wholly unoriginal, or only ever ‘experimental’ in fairly predictable ways - that’s to say, I think there’s a widespread suspicion that the really interesting, surprising stuff is more likely to come from left-field than from a creative writing programme. This may be true.

Do you think agents are an “essential”, “unnecessary” or a “nice to have” for new writers? Why?

Essential - and not just for new writers - because: a) what genuine writer wants to be fussed with all the business side of things?; b) publishing contracts, especially where they concern electronic and digital rights, are fiendishly complicated, and it’s an agent’s day-job to untangle the complications to the author’s advantage; c) agents are professional negotiators - it’s also their day-job to do deals that benefit their authors; d) they can sell film, tv, and foreign translation rights that the author might not know how to locate in the first place; e) such is the state of the publishing industry, a lot of old-school literary editors are working as agents instead - increasingly, it’s your agent who will take the time to offer detailed editorial advice on your work.

There is a lot of talk about the changes occurring in the publishing industry due to the credit crunch, the availability of e-books and the internet as a marketing tool. What are your views on this issue? Should new writers be concerned about the changes happening? Should we be approaching publishing in a different way?

Another good reason for having an agent: they can worry about all this on the writer’s behalf.

How do you think the prevalence of supermarket chains in the bookselling market has affected the industry? Is this a good or bad thing, particularly for debut writers?

Quite a few agents and publishers visit UEA in the spring semester to talk to our students, and this is a recurrent theme of their presentations, the damage done to bookselling and to the literary culture in general by supermarkets - they stock such a limited range, and are so conservative in their choices, and can demand such massive discounts, and operate on such narrow margins… publishers make so little back, they can’t afford to invest in marketing their other writers, or acquiring new ones, or taking risks on titles unlikely to appeal to supermarkets, with whom independent booksellers can’t possibly hope to compete, while the likes of Waterstones do try to compete, but on the supermarkets’ terms - pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap - so there is less and less choice on the shelves, and less and less scope for experimentation, and less and less trickling through to even the lucky authors in terms of royalties… This is what I’m hearing.

In your role as a lecturer at UEA you must see a lot of promising fiction from unpublished writers. What do you feel are the most common mistakes they make, and what do they need to do to rectify these?

I see a lot of unpromising fiction too - at the application stage - and it’s hard both to generalise about common mistakes, or to be specific about particular mistakes. The promising stuff sparks in a way that the more pedestrian unpromising stuff doesn’t. The unpromising stuff has an air of the already-seen, already-said about it; there’s an air of conventionality and cliché hanging over it. Or it is just ill-written, the phrasing cack-handed, cloth-eared. But in almost every instance, what makes the work fail is unique to that work. Similarly, what makes a writer promising is unique to that writer, and once a student is accepted on our course the whole thrust of the workshop is then to identify what it is about each particular work that is working or not working, to get right inside the work, meet it on its own terms, and try to come up with solutions to whatever the issues happen to be with that specific work. I think probably this is what makes teaching creative writing so rewarding - there are no generalities, and lots of surprises. It’s always interesting, and often invigorating.

And finally, can you sum up one key piece of advice for unpublished writers in one sentence?

One word even: read.

Many thanks to Andrew for taking out the time out to chat to us about his experiences in the industry. More information about Andrew can be found here, and details about the MA Creative Writing at UEA can be found here.